


everything changes

by thisisthefamilybusiness



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Motherhood, Pre-Canon, Pre-Dishonored (Video Game), Pregnancy, References to Abortion, Unplanned Pregnancy, well a happy ending until like the last paragraph tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 22:53:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12543044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisthefamilybusiness/pseuds/thisisthefamilybusiness
Summary: There are moments that Jessamine wishes she could capture forever, keep trapped in glass frames like butterfly specimens—Corvo’s frame tucked behind her, a tentative hand cupping the barely-there bump of her belly over her nightgown as they laid together in her bed. The wonder and excitement on Corvo’s face when Jessamine told him that she’d started feeling the first soft flutters of the baby moving within her. These fleeting minutes where she was allowed to simply be Jessamine, where she had no duties and no titles.





	everything changes

**Author's Note:**

> This was mostly spurred by two things: 1) that Jessamine was most likely barely 22 and a year into her rule when she had Emily, and 2) Jessamine as a character has no story or journey of any sort, aside from setting Corvo off on his journey as Sadman Deadwife, and she could be a fairly dynamic character in terms of raw potential (we know that she was considered weaker as a ruler than her father, and her reign was characterized by in-fighting within her ranks, so… I tried to play off those things).

Things that happen on the Fugue Feast didn’t truly count, Jessamine had always whispered, and she and Corvo obeyed that philosophy—that so long as they only were together during those days, they could maintain their working relationship.

Nobody was truly fooled, of course, but what happened during Fugue was of no consequence—everybody at court had their private indulgences they kept hidden but for those precious hours between the years—and so nobody dared to do more than gossip privately.

The illusion of protection that Fugue offered, however, did not extend to the physical realm.

Jessamine was never stupid enough to think it did—that’s what her teas and their careful timings were for—but it had felt so safe, like nothing that happened on Fugue would ever really impact the true world.

Until now, of course. Jessamine settles a hand on her stomach hesitantly as she looks out her window. The physician had said there would be no physical signs for a while yet, aside from perhaps nausea and soreness, and—in a quieter voice, in the solemn tone Jessamine’s noticed people use when they’re talking to her as just Jessamine and not as the Empress—that there were solutions for this sort of inconvenience, but she’d need to decide as soon as possible.

 _Solutions_. Jessamine has seen the _solutions_ that the back-alley doctors offer to less fortunate women in her situation—long needles in bellies and herbal mixtures to induce bleeding—in Parliament when the free-clinic operators come to ask for more funding.

It would be different for her, of course, the physician assured her; a simple surgical procedure that would take almost no time. This could be nothing more than a minor inconvenience that would be completely forgotten in a few months’ time. It’s what Jessamine should do, she knows. It’s what would be best for her empire, for her reign, for whatever respectability and dignity she has left at court. Corvo would never have to know.

 _Corvo_. Poor, dear Corvo, with his soft eyes and his calloused palms and persistent gentleness with her, like he was afraid she might shatter at any moment when they touched. He would never have to know about this _indiscretion_.

Void, if Corvo found out before she decided what to do— Jessamine exhales heavily. She hopes he wouldn’t do her the dishonor of proposing a marriage that he knew she could never agree to. He was a good man, but even the best men could never understand what it meant to rule an empire as a single woman.

 _And now..._ Jessamine cups her palm over the center of her stomach, between her hips, where something too small for her to call it a child yet is slowly blossoming. No more pretending that the Fugue Feast could erase her problems. No more imagining that she could live her days out as Empress theoretically single but truthfully entangled in an affair.

She could simply take the choice the physician offered, go through with the doctor’s solution. Nobody needed to know, and Jessamine could return to her usual life, even if she would never perceive herself as quite the same again.

If Jessamine calls for the physician within an hour, she could be healed enough to return to court when the weekend ends.

It’s what she needs to do, as Empress. Her own feelings on the matter should be irrelevant; this is about what will be best for her empire.

But as Jessamine—as herself—she can’t let go of the image of Corvo holding a child, of a baby with soft dark curls and deep brown eyes. She squeezes her free hand into a fist, long nails leaving crescent-shapes dug into her palm.

Either way, she must make her decision soon.

* * *

“I’m pregnant, Corvo.” In her head, Jessamine had sounded so much more authoritative and collected, but speaking aloud now, her voice cracks and a lump is rapidly forming in her throat. She keeps her gaze locked on the painting of her father above the stone mantelpiece, right above Corvo’s head.

Corvo’s face softens, and he immediately goes to cup her cheek, other hand falling to her hip. “Jessamine, I—” he starts.

“Lord Attano, please don’t touch me,” she snaps, as coldly as she can manage when she’s started crying.

Corvo looks despondent, but he obeys, taking four steps back, clasping his hands behind his back.

Jessamine can’t bring herself to look at him, so she turns back to her desk and shuffles the papers on it around mindlessly. “I was supposed to start negotiating for a marriage this year. I’m twenty-two, after all, and the last Empress was married by twenty.”

“Your Majesty—”

“I’m _talking_ , Lord Attano, let me speak. I’ve been Empress for barely a full year and already people criticize me as a terrible ruler. I have done nothing but follow in my father’s footsteps, make the decisions I know he would have made, but because I am the one making them, they’re less credible somehow. And now—” Jessamine spies an empty teacup a maid had left on her desk and weighs it in her hand, feels its heft. “Now I’m ruined, Corvo! I’m ruined! There is no nobleman who would marry a woman when she’s carrying someone else’s child!” 

The teacup smashes against the wooden floor with a satisfying crunch. Jessamine wipes at her tears with the back of her palm, entire body shaking. “What am I supposed to do, Corvo? You ruined me.”

It’s unfair to blame it all on Corvo, Jessamine knows. She deserves to shoulder part of the guilt. She’d been just as starry-eyed and eager—had encouraged him, even, enjoyed his company and his kisses and his overly-gentle touch. But she’d been twenty and certain her father’s reign would last for another decade, at first, and then she’d been twenty-one and desperate to escape the horrible reality of being the Empress.

Jessamine collapses into the chair at her desk, pressing her hands over her eyes as a sob shakes her body. “I’m so tired, Corvo.”

“I’m... sorry,” Corvo says hesitantly, taking half a step closer. “I am sure there are... Things that can be done, to... end the pregnancy. It is your choice.”

Jessamine laughs, staring at the the ceiling. “And I refused them. Did you know that? The physician stood where you’re standing, and I said no. I told him no.” She folds her hands behind her head. “Because I love you.”

Corvo looks so terribly despaired, helpless. “We...” He clears his throat and fixes on the same blank expression Jessamine sees him wear when they’re in court. “We could marry.”

She laughs again, and Jessamine knows it must feel like some form of cruelty to him. “Don’t you understand, Corvo? Don’t make me tell you no.”

“Let me help you.” The blank expression is gone again, and in its stead Corvo is pleading, stepping closer, the teacup’s shards crunching under the heavy soles of his boots. “Please. As Empress, or as Jessamine, but let me help—“

“Leave, Lord Attano.” She says it softly. “And call in the maid, will you, please? I will call for you when I want to speak again.”

Corvo straightens his posture and nods curtly. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

* * *

Perhaps, Jessamine decides, court won’t take her seriously because they still see her as a little girl living in the shadow of her father. As someone soft, a spoiled child. They talk over her in court, dismiss her out of hand in Parliament. Even her advisors don’t listen to her all the time, dismissing her.

They think her time is better spent daydreaming about galas and dresses, that Jessamine cannot see how they try to plot around her. That she’s still a child who can be distracted by pretty things and overwhelmed with the nonsense legal terms they throw at her.

If she’s to be taken seriously—if she’s going to have this child, and present them to court the same she’d present a child born in wedlock—she needs to start over.

So Jessamine closes court for two weeks, takes a carriage out to Ruane Castle on the rocky shores of eastern Gristol with no fanfare. She takes no visitors or guests aside from the Royal Protector and her head legal advisor, and she refuses to hear the complaints her magistrates and other advisors give about her sudden departure.

When she returns to Dunwall and re-opens the court, she wears her hair pinned up and a black pantsuit. Gone are the soft colors and the skirts that the Empress had worn only a fortnight ago, her dark hair pulled back severely. She looks solemn, a decade older.

When Lord Dodd tries to speak over her as Jessamine presents her first personal Imperial legal decree in the day’s Parliamentary meeting, she does not let him. “You wouldn’t dare speak over the voice of my father, would you, Lord Dodd?” she asks, eyes narrowed. Her heart is pounding in her chest, but even as her hands shake she holds steady. “So why do you speak over me? Am I not your Empress?”

Some of the members of Parliament are whispering amongst themselves. Jessamine does not relent. “Please, tell me, Lord Dodd. Would you have spoken over my father? I deserve an answer.”

Sweat has beaded up on Lord Dodd’s brow. “No, Your Majesty.”

Jessamine fights down a smile as she stares him down. “I have no room for disrespect in my court. You are dismissed, Lord Dodd.”

The man sputters, slamming his hand on the wooden table. “This is ridiculous!”

“If you continue this behavior, Lord Dodd, I will make this a permanent dismissal, and I will have the City Watch escort you out of the Tower.”

Dodd picks up his notes and leaves the Parliamentary chambers with a slam of the door, muttering under his breath the entire while.

Jessamine can feel her face flush with the pride of a victory. “If you have no intention of listening to me, you can leave now and I will not say anything.”

The room is so quiet Jessamine swears she can hear everyone’s breath.

“Nobody?” She allows herself a small grin, clutching her papers in her hand a little harder. “Then I would like to continue discussing my decree, please.”

And for the first time in a year, her court finally listens to Jessamine.

* * *

There are moments that Jessamine wishes she could capture forever, keep trapped in glass frames like butterfly specimens—Corvo’s frame tucked behind her, a tentative hand cupping the barely-there bump of her belly over her nightgown as they laid together in her bed. The wonder and excitement on Corvo’s face when Jessamine told him that she’d started feeling the first soft flutters of the baby moving within her. These fleeting minutes where she was allowed to simply be Jessamine, where she had no duties and no titles.

The physician tells Jessamine that her child can hear her voice, that talking to the baby was a good way to develop a strong bond. As silly as it originally made her feel, Jessamine finds herself talking to her belly more and more frequently—at first, only about her hopes for the baby, but soon about anything from how uncomfortable all her shoes had become to old stories that Jessamine remembered her governesses telling her.

About how dearly Corvo loved them both, even though he could never express it. About the snow that drifted outside the windows of the Tower now that winter had begun, ice crystals leaving beautiful patterns on the glass. About what Jessamine remembers of her own mother, of her father.

Jessamine just hopes that these moments imprint more strongly on her child than the awful ones scattered in between—that her baby cannot hear the vile things she’s overheard in court, the rumors that have been spread about the circumstances of their conception. That her baby will never know just how much Jessamine surrendered to have them. That her child will grow up in a world that treats them kindly, fairly. 

No matter what, she just hopes that the baby knows that she loves them, that Corvo loves them. 

* * *

In the Month of Seeds, in the quiet of the springtime night, in the depths of Dunwall Tower, Jessamine gives birth to a daughter, and her world changes in a way she cannot describe in words.

Emily Drexel Lela Kaldwin the First is a week earlier than she should have been, but she is healthy and hearty, cheeks pink, with watery brown eyes and dark hair, and Jessamine has never loved anything so much. She didn’t know it was possible.

Jessamine would give her entire empire away to protect her daughter. She would sacrifice anything if it would keep the world safe and sound for her. Her hands tremble as she brushes a fingertip against Emily’s cheek.

Jessamine closes her eyes, cradling Emily to her chest, skin-to-skin. She can feel tears welling up, a lump forming in her throat.

She’d give her own heart if it would save her daughter. There is nothing she wouldn’t do to keep this moment forever, nothing she wouldn’t give.

Anything for Emily. Anything for her child.

* * *

“Don’t you want to help your family, Jessamine?” the boy with the black eyes asks, tilting his head at her. “Don’t you love your daughter?”

Jessamine’s mind feels fogged, like she’s just woken up from a very long nap, and she doesn’t realize what the boy is trying to say.

“You said you’d give your heart to protect your daughter, didn’t you?” the boy asks again. “You’d give anything to keep Emily safe, right?”

Jessamine nods sleepily. Of course. Anything for Emily, without hesitation. Where was Emily, anyways? Where was _she_ , for that matter?

“Thank you, Jessamine.” The boy smiles, and Jessamine’s world grows cold again, her eyes heavy with sleep as she drifts off again. _Anything for Emily._

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before it occurred to me that Emily canonically has a birthday and thus you trace her approximate date of conception back. Oh well, it’s an AU where she wasn’t conceived in the winter, I guess. 
> 
> The title of this fic is a reference to the Waitress song of the same name. Why? It fits the fic perfectly, IMO. 
> 
> This was three days' worth of writing from my current self-created writing challenge! The original prompt was [this image](http://officialclaricestarling.tumblr.com/post/166877146833). 
> 
> talk to me [on tumblr](http://officialclaricestarling.tumblr.com) | [deleted]


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